


Family Business

by junko



Series: Senbonzakura's Song [3]
Category: Bleach
Genre: M/M, off-screen violence (canon-typical)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 09:50:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Renji's brother Seichi is in a bad way--but trouble always comes in threes, doesn't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Business

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go to Josey (cestus) for her usual awesome and amazing support and typo-spotting.

Seichi didn’t seem to be able to stand on his own. His whole body was curled up in a tight ball and trembling, so Renji scooped him up into his arms and carried Seichi to the Division’s back gate. 

One of the guards there, however, didn’t seem to want to let Renji pass. 

He was some punk-ass unseated; Renji could smell the empty bitterness of the asauchi at his hip. The kid put up an arm, like he thought he had any chance of stopping a lieutenant. “Sir, I don’t think—“

Renji cut him off sharply: “Fetch a shock blanket from the nearest med kit. Pronto.” When the rookie blinked at him stupidly, Renji shouted, “Move it, soldier! Now!” 

There was a stumbling, but an instant snap to attention and after a hasty, “Yes, sir!” a flash of shunpo. 

To the other guard, Renji took a deep breath and asked as calmly as he could, “Any chance you know what happened to the estate’s medic?”

“Uh, yes, sir, I heard there was some kind of problem with the recent supply train. The teamsters came in reporting a lot of injuries. She’s been tied up with them all morning.”

“Injuries? Right, okay,” Renji shifted Seichi’s weight in his arms. “I’m going to want a report on that. Make sure the Twentieth Seat hears his lieutenant is looking for him. After that moron gets back with the blanket, I want you to send someone to the Fourth to get the estate’s healer any back-up she needs.”

“But, lieutenant, they’re not shinigami…”

“Do I look like I give a fuck?”

A rush of air signaled the return of the first gate guard.

“Both of you are on probation starting right now. If I hear one more ‘but’ after I issue an order, I’m going to kick your butts so hard they’re going to bounce into next week, do you understand me?” Renji snarled. 

They gulped out a, “Yes, sir!”

“Help me get that blanket around Seichi and hop the fuck to, you!” Renji growled to the first guard and then the second. As the second started to take off, Renji added, “Oi, and if they got a spare medic after all is said and done, send one to the lieutenant’s quarters.”

“Yes, sir!” he said sounding more than a little terrified.

Renji nodded a little at the show of respect just to let the idiot know he was on the right track. But, as he passed, Renji caught another whiff of the searing emptiness. His lip curled. “You’d better have progress on a zanpakuto in a week or I’ll throw you to the Twelfth, you hear?”

The guard glanced up his eyes wide and his face pale. But, Renji had no sympathy. How the fuck did they even graduate like that? And who signed this kid on here, of all the Divisions? Irritated, Renji shifted Seichi again and made his way to his quarters. 

People lifted hands to wave, but stopped when they saw Renji’s burden. The tiny blond Ninth Seat, Shimazaki, spotted him and came rushing up, “Is someone injured?” Then she seemed to notice the Kuchiki blues sticking out from under the blanket. “Was there an attack on the estate? I heard…”

“It was the supply train reporting injuries. I’ve sent for some medics. But, this… uh, is unrelated,” Renji shook his head. As she fell in to walk beside him, he tried explaining, “This is my brother… he’s not feeling well. I’m going to let him rest up in my quarters for a while.”

Her hands flew to her mouth. “You have a brother? I thought people from the Rukongai… Oh. I mean…. That is….”

She stopped at Renji’s glare. “Do me a favor,” he said to her. “Go tell Nanako I’m going to be a tiny bit late. I want to get some food in him and get him settled.” 

She seemed relieved to have something to do. “Yes, sir!” she said and scurried away.

Renji made it the rest of the way to his quarters without being accosted. He quickly kicked off his sandals at the door and used his stocking foot to wedge the door aside enough to get his shoulder around it. He slid it aside. 

His room still smelled fresh, like whatever cleaning agents Byakuya’s servants had used. The little origami Hihio Zabimaru sat where he’d left it on his footlocker. Someone had brought in the stuffed tiger and set it on the pillows of his cot. There was a paper bag at the foot of his bed. As he stepped over it to situate Seichi on the mattress, Renji could see that the bag was full of the porn manga he’d bought in the Human World. Even the kenseikan shard necklace had made it back; Renji spotted it hanging over the knob of the top drawer of his dresser.

When Seichi was all the way on the bed, Renji smoothed the hair away from Seichi’s cheek. “You in there?” he asked. “You ain’t said a peep. You haven’t gone catatonic on me, have you?”

“No, ‘sir,’” he whispered. His face broke into a kind of strange smile. “They really jump when you shout, don’t they?”

“Not fast enough,” Renji said with a shake of his head. “The fuck they’d talk to the captain like that. A little KP will learn ‘em.”

Seichi nodded absently, like he wasn’t really listening, and hunched up as if trying to get all of himself under the tiny shock blanket. Renji grabbed an extra sheet from the top of his footlocker and spread it over Seichi.

After he was done, he tucked the blankets around Seichi’s shivering shoulders. “Look, I’m going to grab you something from the mess. But, then I got to leave you here on your own. My shift started five minutes ago.” Crouching down beside Seichi, Renji put his hand on Seichi’s back, rubbing circles comfortingly. “You’re going to be alright. Just get some kip in or something, huh? No one’s going to bother you here. I’ll send word to the gardener, so don’t worry about going back at the moment.”

“Please don’t go, Renji,” Seichi said feebly.

Renji felt like a heel when he stood and stepped over the threshold to put his sandals back on. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to. Seich’. I’ll check in when I can. Food will make you feel better. Just hang on.”

#

Always a busy place, the lieutenant’s office was jumping by the time Renji got back from setting a tray on the floor beside a snoozing Seichi. 

Seeing Nanako, Renji asked, “Have you gotten anything from the estate yet about what happened with the supply train?”

She shook her head. “It was news to me, but I’m hearing it was an attack. So I sent some people over to find out what they need from us. I guess the medics you asked for are arriving now,” she said. “I sent Shimazaki to escort them.”

“Good. You’ve made sure the captain knows?” 

The Kuchiki staff would go to Byakuya directly, but if they thought he was on clan business they might not feel they could interrupt him immediately. A Division soldier could bully their way in.

Renji didn’t want to assume she’d think of all that, so he was pleased with her nod and somewhat snappish, “Of course.”

He let out a breath. “Right, well, we’ll just have to let the Twentieth Seat do his job and wait for reports to trickle in.” Renji went over to the desk to take the seat she was vacating. “You got to figure retribution though, right? You said the captain left the bodies for the carrion-eaters. My money’s on somebody’s kin.”

Nanako gathered up some paperwork before shifting aside. “Not the bandit king?”

“Could be,” Renji acknowledged, “If he really is shinigami and can travel fast enough to have gotten the news. I guess we’ll have to see if anything was taken. If the head honcho attacked a train, didn’t managed to decimate it and left the goods? His rep is shot.” Unless, of course, he’d taken out Sixth Division escorts, because killing a shinigami in the Rukongai made you a god. Renji shrugged to himself. “Do you know if we had a detail with this train? The gate guard seemed to think everyone involved were regular souls.”

Nanako stopped in her filing, and said, “Crap, that used to be Miisho’s thing, didn’t it? Ah, Renji, I’m sorry. Nothing’s been done. I forgot about that, and… I’m going to need some introductions or something if I’m supposed to take over liaising with the estate on supply train security.”

The Twentieth Seat did a lot of the guard/patrol details for the joint properties of the estate and the Division, but anytime security had been needed out beyond the walls, the Third Seat had coordinated with Byakuya’s family.

After all, that’s how Miisho’d become Aunt Masama’s spy.

Renji put his head on his desk. He felt like he should smack his forehead against the wood a few times for good measure. So, he did.

“Renji?”

Into the desk, he said, “The Third Seat. Goddamn it, how stupid am I?”

“Uh…”

Renji lifted his head enough to give her the look that said, ‘don’t answer that.’ 

But, cripes, how had he not connected the dots the first time Byakuya told him about the raids and the mysterious way that the bandit king seemed to know not only their route, but also the contents of their goods manifest? Technically, Eishiro knew all of this as well, but Miisho had the one thing Eishiro presumably did not: motive.

“Are you okay, Renji?” Nanako asked. “What about the Third Seat?”

Renji opened his mouth to explain, but then he thought better of it. Even though it seemed obvious, there wasn’t any proof that Miisho was involved. And, there’d been enough bad blood between him and Miisho, that Renji really shouldn’t go slandering the guy around the Division without anything concrete to back it up.

So, instead, he said, “I can’t believe I forgot that when Miisho left, there’d be no one coordinating security patrols for the Kuchiki. We’re fucking lucky there ain’t been any kidnappings. If the captain had to deal with a ransom, he’d have my head.”

Nanako shuddered at the thought. Still clutching her papers, she said, “I’m kind of scared of the Kuchiki, honestly.”

Renji laughed. “Yeah, that’s healthy.”

Because one of the things the liaison had to do was actually deal with far-flung cousins and all the various allied families directly, or at least via butterfly or correspondence, and… well, the politics of what should be a simple job was actually kind of staggering, because if you gave one guy three guards and another none, you could accidentally trigger a blood feud. It was partly why the lieutenant before Renji had ceded the job. Ginjirō Shirogane was the first lieutenant in forever that wasn’t Kuchiki or noble, so he’d given the job to the next highest-ranking person who’d at least been born inside the Seireitei. 

The other reason Ginjirō probably dumped the job, Renji was sure, was to have a scapegoat if it all went pear shaped. It was one thing to have to execute a lieutenant for disrespecting some minor Kuchiki. But, a Third? Sure, you could see them as more expendable, if you were that sort.

Renji rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at Nanako. “Uh, can you even do the job? I mean… fuck, this is rude, but you got noble blood?”

She shook her head. “I was born inside the walls, but my folks were both in the Court Guard.”

“An army brat?” Renji nodded his approval. He thought maybe he did remember hearing a story or two about a dad who’d mustered out to raise her. He had some kind of shop near the Eleventh? Noodles! Renji remembered suddenly. “Right, well, you might be okay on a technicality, then. I mean, if you want it?”

She turned her back to him to finish filing. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I mean, it’s a steep learning curve, but I think we might have to go all the way down to the Ninth Seat to find a noble.”

That far? Huh, things had changed around the Division. Renji wondered if it was his influence or Byakuya’s own preferences. “Yeah, the Kuchiki would be insulted to have to deal with someone so low on the chain of command.”

“Absolutely,” she said. “I guess they’ll just have to put up with my military pedigree.”

Renji nodded. Honestly, it was a strange loophole, but being military bred and born was kind of a free pass into almost any house, from high noble castle to the lowest hovel.

Well, then, that was settled. They’d just have to poke the captain to get Nanako the proper and formal introductions. In fact, he should probably get Eishiro started on some of that immediately, so there’d be no more lapses in security in the meantime—especially if Byakuya was going to be interviewing candidates for heir. That was potentially a lot of Kuchiki bright stars traveling through the wilderness. 

Renji was just about to summon a Hell butterfly, when the Twentieth Seat came rushing in. He hastily sketched bows, first to Renji, who was just standing up, and Nanako still by the filing cabinets. “Sir,” he said, “Ma’am. I heard you wanted a report ASAP?”

The Twentieth Seat was as Spartan as his office. Like most of the soldiers in the Sixth, there were no visible embellishments to the standard shinigami uniform. His short hair was the color of burnished steel and his eyes were a similar gray. 

Renji came around to the other side of his desk. He perched his butt on the edge, crossed his arms in front of his chest, and sat back to listen, “Go on, then. Was it a deliberate attack?”

“It seems so, sir,” The Twentieth bowed again. “Most of the bodyguards were injured. The head teamster has been taken to the Fourth Division. He nearly lost an arm protecting the trader’s key.”

Right, the kido passkey, that got groups of regular souls through the barriers. Some day Renji’d have to figure out how it was that he and Rukia managed it all those years ago. 

Wait, ‘most’ of the bodyguard?

Before Renji could ask, Nanako asked, “You think that was the objective? To steal the key?”

“It’s hard to say, ma’am,” The Twentieth said, still standing at attention. “The teamster’s efforts saved the key, but otherwise it wasn’t a very coordinated assault. We’re still going through the inventory, but it’s already obvious some of the luxury items were taken: sugar, curry, and some of the dried foods. A list went to the estate, but I made a copy for you,” the Twentieth pulled a sheaf of papers from the inside of his kosode and handed it to Renji. 

Renji took it and scanned it. But, he had no idea what he should be looking for so, he just passed it to Nanako and asked, “Is this the sort of stuff that usually gets taken?”

The Twentieth’s eyes narrowed and he said, “Nothing usually gets stolen, Lieutenant.”

It was difficult, but Renji managed not to roll his eyes. He could see why a guy like this was a good liaison with the estate; he seemed to have absorbed the whole pride thing. “I meant, in general.”

“I wouldn’t have any idea which items Rukongai thieves normally prefer,” he said. He didn’t say anything more, but the challenge in his glare seemed to add, ‘you tell me.’

Renji pushed off the desk ready to get in this smartass’s face and say something like, ‘You got a problem with me’ or ‘The fuck I ever saw anything as rich as sugar in Inuzuri,’ when Nanako put her arm on his. To the Twentieth she said, “It would be good to know if the attack was typical of these sorts of things,” she told the Twentieth Seat. “The lieutenant and I were earlier discussing whether or not this attack might have been motivated by revenge.”

The Twentieth Seat was not getting the hint to rein it in, however. “How would I know? My job is to make sure all the walls are patrolled. I don’t know anything about all this.”

All Renji wanted to do at this point was smack the guy upside the head, but luckily Nanako kept talking instead. “Yes, this is all just conjecture. Thank you for your report. You’re dismissed.”

The Twentieth bowed and turned smartly on his heels. But Renji stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. Over the Twentieth’s shoulder and into his ear, Renji said lowly, “You must like that job of yours, because, with the Third gone, there was opportunity to promote, which you pretty much just fucked-up.”

“Not all of us live to advance, Lieutenant,” he said, shaking Renji’s hand from his shoulder.

As the Twentieth stalked off, Renji mused out loud: “No? What’s that Kuchiki auntie promised you, I wonder.” After all, it was noticeable that everyone who had some kind of independent connection to the estate had a lot of attitude and no desire to leave their position. To Nanako, Renji asked, “How long he been Twentieth, anyway?”

She happened to still be near the file cabinets, so she moved over to where the personnel files were kept. Her fingers counted twenty, pulled out a thick jacket, and said, “A couple of centuries?” Taking a moment to do the math in her head, said, “Two hundred and forty-seven years.”

Longer than Byakuya had been captain. Damn near as long as Miisho had been Third. What a fucking disaster it would be if both the guy who provided external security for the supplies and the guy who made sure the walls were never breached were in cahoots together. 

“Look, you got another hour before you’re off, right?” Renji asked Nanako. When she nodded, he said, “I’m going to go over and have a word with the head bodyguard. The Twentieth Seat said ‘most’ of the bodyguards were injured and I want to know why it wasn’t every damn last one of them.”

#

Renji found the captain of the bodyguard at the trader’s gate, inspecting the damage to the carts and horses. The wind was howling and smelled of snow. The head bodyguard was wrapped in a thick coat as she bent to run her hand along the length of one of the heavy supply wagons. She glanced up at Renji’s approach. 

“Ah, Lieutenant,” she said, clearly unsurprised that he’d come to see her. Her snow white hair was cut close to her head like a helmet and she had a prominent hawk-like nose and matching wide, sharp eyes. “Tell me, does this look like fire or kido damage?”

Kido? Renji crouched down where she’d indicated and put a hand on the wood. He pulled it back almost immediately. “Fuck. Now we got to worry about rogue kido users?” 

Though hadn’t Seichi said something about how kido spells were prison currency?

“It seems so,” she agreed. Wiping her hands on the thighs of her hakama, she stood up. Glancing at the scorch mark, she asked, “Though, you can’t tell, can you, if it was a backfire?”

“You mean like my specialty?” Renji chuckled as he pulled himself up. “You thinking one of yours might have caused some friendly fire?” 

She just gave him an eyebrow quirk, because they both knew she could never officially admit to harboring anyone with the kind of spiritual pressure to pull off even low-level kido. But Renji knew that noble families recruited Academy dropouts all the time. It was a great way to get people with at least rudimentary military training. 

So, he just shrugged and explained, “There’s really no way to tell. It’s the same spell whether it worked the way it was supposed to or not.”

She nodded. Putting her shoulder up against the cart, she gave Renji another sly look. “Can you tell who might have cast the spell?”

Renji shook his head. “I’d only be able to tell if it were someone I knew really pretty well, and I don’t know any of your—“

“Could you tell if I were Kuchiki? Or that Third Seat of yours?”

“I could probably—wait, where are you going with this?” Somehow, despite the fact that Renji had come here to chew her out, he was the one getting interrogated. Even so, if she had a way to connect this to Miisho, Renji wanted to know. “And did you say Kuchiki?”

“Well, the cousin may have attempted to protect herself and I thought maybe since she’s a relative of the captain their kido signatures might—“

“Whoa! Stop right there, what cousin? What are you talking about?” Renji asked even as his heart started pounding with the possibility. “Are you saying there was a kidnapping?”

The head bodyguard gave Renji a pointed look. “I thought that’s why you’d come up.”

“No, I was wondering why there was a report that only ‘most’ of your detail was injured,” he said stupidly, while his brain kept repeating: ohshitohshitohshit-a ransom-ohshitohshitohshit.

“That’s because I’ve got some runners. They deserted when the Kuchiki was taken.”

Fuck yeah, I’m thinking about running for the hills right now too, Renji added silently. Then his brain stuttered back into action. In a second, he summoned a Hell Butterfly, “To Fourth Seat Nanako Imai from Lieutenant Renji Abarai. Mobilize every available solider for search and rescue parties. I want groups of three going in every direction from the point of ambush, and I want them out the door as fast as possible. We have a Kuchiki to rescue.”

“No you don’t.” Byakuya’s voice caused Renji to nearly jump out of his skin. 

How could a person with massive spiritual pressure sneak up on a guy like that? Renji turned, holding the butterfly ready for new orders. “What do you mean, Taicho? You heard. They have your cousin.”

“Yes, exactly. They have her. She’s theirs now,” Byakuya said coldly. “We will pay no ransom. If we did that, we’d be targeted by every would-be-kidnapper in the Rukongai. Her fate is her own now.”

Byakuya’s tone was: ‘And now the matter is settled’ but Renji just couldn’t believe it. “But, sir, we could get people out there, I’m sure we could—“

“Fall into a trap set by the bandit? Unacceptable,” Byakuya asked. “Use your head, Renji. We will do nothing.”

What else could he say? “Yes, sir.”


End file.
